The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea--The Forgotten War of the South Pacific by James Campbell

Author:James Campbell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: World War II, Asian History, Military History, Asia, U.S.A., Retail, American History
ISBN: 0307335976
Publisher: Broadway
Published: 2007-10-01T15:00:00+00:00

East of the Girua River, as Colonel Smith began moving on the Triangle, he was heartened by the arrival of Major Stutterin’ Smith’s 2nd Battalion.

Smith, too, was happy to be back among familiar faces. The 128th had been his home for more than twenty years. One of the first people he saw was Lieutenant Mack Fradette, an old friend. Fradette was stunned by the condition of Smith and his men. Smith, who had always had problems keeping weight on, was as thin as a cornstalk. He had also just recovered from a bout of malaria. His men all wore long beards and in Fradette’s opinion looked like “walking skeletons.”

As the battalion got settled, Colonel Smith gave Stutterin’ Smith a quick tour of the area. However, the major would have very little time to familiarize himself with the lay of the land; the attack was scheduled for the following day. He must have hesitated for a moment when he saw the battlefield. “Buna,” Smith wrote, “was a nightmare…of jungle…kunai grass higher than a man’s head…and swamps…that rose and fell with the tides…. The Japs had built bunkers” with “excellent fields of fire covering approaches from inland routes…. These bunkers” were “practically invisible.”

That night, Stutterin’ Smith put Lieutenant Odell in charge of a platoon in Company F. Odell was forty pounds lighter than when he had come to New Guinea. Still, he realized that the “hardships thus far encountered were nothing compared with the hell that was to come.”

Just short of midnight on November 23, Colonel Smith and Stutterin’ Smith held a council of war at the colonel’s command post, which was situated along the Soputa-Buna track three-quarters of a mile short of the Triangle. They had already resolved the confusion that might arise from two battalions fighting side by side, each one commanded by a Herbert Smith. Stutterin’ Smith became Red Smith and Colonel Smith was White Smith. They also laid out the plans for the following day’s attack. It would come from three directions and would begin at 0800 with bombing and strafing by American pilots. Before the troops moved out, four 25-pounders, new to the front, would open up on the Triangle.

Despite the plans, both Smiths knew that they would be flying by the seat of their pants. They had no topographical maps of the area and their aerial photographs proved worthless; a large cloud covered the zone in which the attack was supposed to take place.

Dawn came in with a rush and at 0800 the planes appeared. Twelve P-40s strafed the Triangle, but for some reason the bombers never showed. Worse yet, the P-40 pilots completely missed their target. Both Smiths hesitated. They could not possibly send their men into the Triangle now; it would be a suicide mission. They called for more planes, which arrived five hours later—but only four of the twelve they had requested. Rather than firing on the Triangle, though, the four P-40s, unable to identify their targets in the thick foliage, turned their guns on Colonel Smith’s command post.

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